Last year Apple posted a press release titled "Apple now globally powered by 100 percent renewable energy." Apple stated that its global facilities are powered with 100 percent clean energy. This achievement includes retail stores, offices, data centres and co-located facilities in 43 countries — including the United States, the United Kingdom, China and India.

Our cover graphic illustrates Apple’s new headquarters in Cupertino which is powered by 100 percent renewable energy, in part from a 17-megawatt onsite rooftop solar installation.

Today, Apple was granted a patent for "Photovoltaic Arrays" or solar panels, a patent that they acquired from SolarCity as shown below.

Apple's granted patent 10,309,690 was originally filed in Q1 2018 by Apple and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office. SolarCity was first granted this patent in 2012 under number 9863665. SolarCity was acquired by Tesla in 2016.

In 2017 Apple had 25 operational renewable energy projects around the world, totaling 626 megawatts of generation capacity, with 286 megawatts of solar PV generation, its most ever in one year. Apple also had 15 more projects in construction. Once built, over 1.4 gigawatts of clean renewable energy generation will be spread across 11 countries.

Obviously Apple wanted to own this technology that is going into their many projects.

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